Gilbert & George (b. 1943 & b. 1942)

Spitalfields dates from 1980, one of the most productive years of Gilbert and George's career, and shows a view of the East London area in which they made their home over four decades ago when they moved into Fournier Street, where they remain to this day. Over the years, their works have often observed and commented upon the gradual change of character in the Spitalfields area, which has in more recent memory been transformed, becoming an important hub for the contemporary art scene; when they moved there in the 1960s, by contrast, it was exciting, rough and, most importantly for the then-struggling artists, cheap. Before its regeneration and rebirth, the East End provided the artists with an ideal vantage point from which to view and record the discontent that was so rife in the streets of newly-Thatcherite Britain, and this they recorded in both their portraits of various youths and in their landscape works such as Spitalfields. This work combines a haunting sense of the decline of the city and at the same time an intimacy, a charmed familiarity and a Romanticism, focussing as it does on the tree and its branches, which snake across its surface. This is their home, the area that they love, the place where they have created their elaborate daily rituals, often eating in the same cafes that they have visited since first moving to the area.

As self-proclaimed 'living sculptures,' Gilbert and George have often made a point of capturing their own acts and their surroundings in photographs, immortalising their own lifestyle, which was equally their artistic output. It is telling that, in the year that Spitalfields was created, they also produced a film, The World of Gilbert and George, capturing their unique universe in celluloid while also recording the atmosphere of the age. Spitalfields clearly shows a part of the urban backdrop to the performed existence of Gilbert and George; this picture is therefore a facet of that continuing, living work and acts as a marker within the personal mythology that they have created over the years.